[Box-Admins] Mail delivery from dan.box.squeak.org to mail.squeak.org at 162.242.237.43

[David T. Lewis]

Thanks Tobias,

On Fri, Jan 05, 2018 at 09:31:31AM +0100, Tobias Pape wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> > On 05.01.2018, at 01:21, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I am only guessing, but stepping through the smtp interaction in a debugger
> > tells me that an optional username/password may be exchanged in the smtp
> > protocol. The squeaksource.com image does not supply this, possibly because it
> > originally sent mail via box2.squeak.org, and now via mail.squeak.org (???).
> > 
> > Is a username/password required for the client on dan.box.squeak.org to connect
> > to the smtp server at mail.squeak.org?
> 
> Sorry I did not step in earlier.
> 
> Yes. I configured the mailer to _relay_ for our boxen, so that there's no user/pw interchange.
> What would it be in the first place?

I was just taking a wild guess there, thanks for the clarification.

> 
> Also, You could try localhost, there's an exim running that uses mail. as a smarthost.

Well d'oh! I am an idiot. I thought I had tried that a long time ago, but
apparently not. I just ran a test with localhost and it works fine.

> 
> I wonder, because it had worked up until now???

It has never worked since the move to Rackspace. I had disabled the mail delivery
in the squeaksource.com image to prevent problems (VMMaker is on source.squeak.org
now, and I'm not sure that anyone would care about the mail notifications anyway).

But it turns out that there are occasional error conditions in SqueakSource for
which the image tries to send mail to the box-admins list, which (due to
the mail failures) results in a recursive error condition that eventually
locks up the image.

I'll update the squeaksource.com image to relay the mail via localhost. That will
resolve the problem of occasional image lockups.

Thank you!

Dave


> 
> Best regards
> 	-Tobias
> 
> > 
> > Dave
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, Jan 03, 2018 at 08:52:34PM -0500, David T. Lewis wrote:
> >> The squeaksource.com image runs on dan.box.squeak.org, and it occasionally
> >> tries to send SMTP mail to mail.squeak.org, which resolves to 162.242.237.43.
> >> The attempt to connect to the mail server results in a 503 service not available
> >> error.  This in turn results in failures that hang the squeaksource image (but
> >> that is a subject for another discussion). For now, I am trying to understand how
> >> to get mail delivery working.
> >> 
> >> I need some help to understand the source of the error. Is there something
> >> about our Rackspace server configuration (and network configurations) that
> >> would prevent mail delivery from working when the SMTP client connects from
> >> a Squeak image running on dan.box.squeak.org to the mail server at address
> >> 162.242.237.43?
> >> 
> >> Background: For purposes of debugging, I am VNC connecting to a modified
> >> squeaksource.com image running on dan.box.squeak.org, and I am evaluating the
> >> following snippet to debug the SMTP connection issue:
> >> 
> >>   fromAddress := 'squeaksource at source.squeakfoundation.org'.
> >>   recipientList := OrderedCollection new add: 'box-admins at lists.squeakfoundation.org'; yourself.
> >>   recipientList := OrderedCollection new add: 'dtlewis290 at gmail.com'; yourself.
> >>   messageText := 'This is a test message from a squeaksource.com test image.'.
> >>   smtpServer := 'mail.squeak.org'.
> >> 
> >>   SMTPClient
> >>           deliverMailFrom: fromAddress
> >>           to: recipientList
> >>           text: messageText
> >>           usingServer: smtpServer.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> The connection failure results in an error response '503 5.5.1 Error: send HELO/EHLO first'.
> >> 
> >> Help and pointers appreciated.
> >> 
> >> Dave